Buy-to-let landlords triple since 1980

Nearly six per cent of households are receiving income from rented properties – a figure that has tripled since the 1980s, according to new data from the Office for National Statistics.

The buy-to-let boom has grown at a rapid pace since the onset of the financial crisis, with the proportion of households reporting income from rent rising from 3.8 per cent to 5.6 per cent in the last six years alone.

Landlords have also benefited from rising equity, with house prices up substantially in the last few years, potentially making many ‘property millionaires’.

This growing army of landlords has had a huge knock-on effect on younger Britons – dubbed ‘generation rent’ – with an explosion of those aged 26 to 30 now privately renting a home because they cannot afford to buy.